There is a 140-year-old building in downtown Cohoes that has survived the city's industrial rise and decline, entertained immigrant workers with silent movies, games of billiards and tankards of ale and hosted the backroom meetings that powered Albany County's political machine.

Of all the history that has played out at 171 Remsen St., nothing left such an indelible mark as the oversized personality of Michael T. "Big Mike" Smith, a flamboyant mountain of a politician who rose from local ward politics to national prominence as a friend of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Waterford property developer Joe Hostig, who also owns a piece of the Normanside Country Club, bought the building in 2008. I've met Hostig only once, while I dined at Smith's of Cohoes, but I feel grateful to him for saving this building and reopening it with such respect and restraint that one wonders if some of the soot on the tin ceilings came directly from Big Mike's fat cigar. During our weeknight visit, Hostig mingled with the crowd lining the nearly 50-foot bar. It was easy to imagine Big Mike — 6-foot-4 in a white suit and Stetson hat — holding court among them.

Hostig made some updates to the old school menus that prevailed for the 27 years the restaurant was run by mother-daughter team Eunice Antonucci and Margaret Kehn. He added a light-fare menu featuring steamers, shrimp cocktail, fried calamari, potatoes or mozzarella and chicken in the form of wings, quesadillas and tenders ($3.50 to $9.75) with $8 to $9 burgers and sandwiches. Inexpensive "home cooking" includes meatloaf, fish and chips, roast turkey, shepherd's pie, pierogies and kielbasa, pot roast, mac-and-cheese and calf liver. Fancier entrees include the American steakhouse multilingual lexicon of Cordon Bleus, alfredos, napoleons, marsalas and fra diavolos ($15.95 to $25.95).

Our server, caught short-handed after a fellow waiter went home sick, worried aloud about the speed at which our meal was reaching us, but I found the leisurely pace comfortable. Crocks of French onion soup ($5.75), smothered in perfectly browned Swiss, provolone and Romano, had just the right sweetness from caramelized onions and sherry floating in a rich beef stock. A pair of crab cakes "alla Smith's" ($10.75) were huge and darkly fried with a loose interior that contained a fair amount of crab. Goat cheese "coins" ($9) arrived hot and gooey in their soft crust, drizzled with a delicate apricot sauce.

The kitchen was steady and consistent with the proteins. The Southern fried chicken ($12.95) was exceptionally moist and hot, with herbs and spices in the crunchy breading that were more authentically Southern than you could rationally hope for in a Mohawk River mill town. A bone-in pork chop ($19.95) was juicy and well-paired with gingery applesauce. Chicken Cordon Bleu ($16.95) had such a crisp shell that the chef noticed as he passed our table and sprinted for a steak knife to help my son break through to the pool of Swiss and capicola in the center. An immaculate piece of mahi-mahi ($23) was cooked perfectly all the way through. I was lured to the dish by the tropical fruit sauce, which turned out to be an unadorned sprinkling of chunks that felt scanty by comparison to the huge slab of fish. Everything but the fried chicken came with a fresh side salad with good vinaigrette, steamed broccoli and an unfortunate gray, lumpy, scalloped-potato concoction. A weighty piece of carrot cake was moist and creamy, with a good balance of spices, plump raisins and crunchy walnuts.

To understand the romantic charm of Smith's, you have to imagine the Spindle City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rich with cotton and knitting industrialists and the immigrant workers who made them wealthy. Democratic political machines served as rudimentary public-welfare systems. Smith, a member of the Albany County Board of Supervisors for a decade from 1894, ran an establishment in the heart of the Harmony Mills district that fed the elderly and poor, as well as a Willow Street tavern colloquially known as a "poor man's club." As his wealth and influence grew, he acquired about 90 buildings in Cohoes.

Big Mike opened Smith's Restaurant in 1937, four years after the repeal of the 18th Amendment, but the joint still rings with Prohibition-era associations. Around the turn of the century, the building had been used successively as a silent movie theater, pool hall and tavern, so there may have been some under-the-counter booze sales at some point, even though it was Finn's across the street that was known as the city's speakeasy. Because of political feuding with Republican New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, Smith never was able to get a liquor license. He sold liquor anyway, and was rumored to host a gambling den, too, but wielded enough power that he never got shut down for it. Our waiter showed us mysterious buttons on an exterior wall that he thinks might have been used to alert patrons to police raids.

An avid collector of expensive things, Smith was especially proud of the African mahogany bar, inlaid with walnut, that he bought from an Albany speakeasy owner. It is reputed to have been taken from the 1830 Tammany Hall building on East 14th Street in Manhattan before it was demolished in 1927. In the first years Smith's was open, Big Mike added a dining room, turning the tavern into one of the most well-regarded restaurants in Albany County, as well as the de facto headquarters for the Cohoes Democratic Party. The room has the original intricate black-and-white basket weave inlaid tile and dark, rich woodwork.

An Italian stonemason from Cohoes laid the glorious fireplace, then took it apart and rebuilt on a different wall when Smith decided he didn't like the feel of it. When Smith decided it still wasn't grand enough, the mason took it apart again and built it bigger. It runs on gas now. Our server noticed me admiring it from afar, and with small-town hospitality, insisted we move to a prime fireside table as soon another couple finished their meal there.

Food (★★1/2): Consistent preparation of good quality proteins, large portions and fair pricing. Sauces and side veggies seemed like an afterthought. The scalloped potatoes that came with three of our four dinners were not up to the standards of the meats and fish. Moist, delicious carrot cake.

Beverage: (**1/2): Pleasant selection of drafts at the spectacular, 48-foot bar. Brief, 33-bottle wine list is garden variety but is value-priced, especially at the higher end, which tops out at $35 for still wine. Nearly all the wines are sold by the glass ($6 to $9.50), making the glass selection above average. Bartender has old-school charm and professionalism.

Service (★★★): Small-town, earnest and solicitous.

Ambience (★★★): An historical novel with refreshments, and perhaps some of the original soot. Incandescent chandeliers bathe the Depression-era opulence in a yellow glow. Friendly and inclusive attitude encourages admiration of the antique bar, floors, walls, ceilings, etc. 1950s and '60s music seemed anachronistic for the room, but fit right in with the vintage of some of the recipes.

Personality: (***1/2): The building is the star and the staff its faithful entourage. You'd have to be completely unromantic not to get a crush on it.

Overall rating: **1/2

Glorious 5-foot tall, 150-year-old Japanese urns from the Burden estate in Troy that Big Mike kept on the bar are displayed in the corners of an additional dining room that was added in 1949, the year Smith died at the age of 90.